U.S. Pat. No. 3,933,150 discloses a medical anti-shock trouser, sometimes referred to in abbreviated form as a MAST suit, which is intended to be used in the emergency treatment of shock victims. The trouser takes the form of a double-walled panel having a pair of leg sections adapted to be wrapped about a patient's legs and an abdominal section to be wrapped about his abdomen. Between the impermeable walls of the panel is a chamber which may be inflated to apply circumferential counterpressure on the lower extremities and lower body section to decrease the volume of venous blood pooled therein, increase the circulation of blood to the patient's heart and brain, reduce hemorrhaging in the legs and lower body, and provide limited immobilization to protect the patient should there be fractures in the legs and lower body. While such MAST suits are widely used by emergency teams to help accident victims as they are being rescued and transported to medical facilities, it is believed apparent that their effectiveness is reduced if not completely destroyed, sometimes with fatal consequences for patients, should the chambers of such suits develop leaks during or prior to use. Unfortunately, should precautionary testing reveal that a suit has developed a leak, conventional suit design renders user repair of such a suit virtually impossible. The repair of leaks (which may be caused by organisms or general deterioration as well as by accidental puncture, overinflation, heat seal failure, etc.) generally requires factory attention and in many cases total replacement of the units. Unless an emergency team has at least one operative standby unit available, that team and the shock victims that it seeks to help must do without the benefit of a MAST suit while repair or replacement of a defective unit is being obtained.
Such problems have been reduced, but far from resolved, by providing each MAST suit with a plurality of inflatable chambers instead of only a single chamber. While it has been suggested (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,039,039) that the plural chambers need not be integral with the garment but might instead be located in pockets, such a construction does not appear to have ever become commercially available, possibly because of difficulties in achieving bladder removability and replaceability without interfering with the uniform application of pressure in use and, in general, without adversely affecting the operability and effectiveness of the structure as a whole.
A further problem with prior constructions relates to the difficulties of making abdominal punctures or spinal taps after the trousers have been fitted and inflated upon the patients. If, for example, a trouser must be partially or fully deflated in order to permit an abdominal puncture (usually to detect internal hemorrhaging), then such deflation may itself work to create the shock condition which the MAST suit is intended to protect against.
Other references revealing the state of the art are U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,762,047, 2,871,849, 3,823,711, 3,823,712, 1,916,789, Canadian Pat. No. 835,003, and Pelligra, R., and E. C. Sandberg, Control of Intractable Abdominal Bleeding by External Counterpressure, JAMA 241:708-713 (1979).